The Snotty Literati

Hello, and welcome to my latest brainchild, or, perhaps, my latest insane ramblings. For a long time, I have wanted to start a book club. But not just any book club, however. Unlike your average, everyday book club, which reads books off of the New York Times bestseller list or the Oprah Book Club, this one reads only sophisticated works of fiction and nonfiction--old classics, new classics, complicated works with layer upon layer of meaning. And so forth and so on. Ergo the book club's name: the Snotty Literati.

A splendid dream. Just imagine it in your mind. A group of people who sit around in old, threadbare chairs of various hues of that putrid shade of green that was so popular in a day and age that nobody remembers anymore, and drink absurd amounts of coffee and hard liquor (and smoking one or another disgusting form of tobacco) while doing battle with famous philosophers and poets and writers. And, of course, there are books everywhere, mouldering in piles, piled two deep on bookshelves groaning under the weight of paper.

A dreamy, unreal dream. Alas, I can never experience it in actuality, despite the fact that I already possess my own tacky green chair, purchased at a garage sale for $10 many years ago. After all, I don't smoke or own nearly enough books, and I most definitely cannot afford to sit around on my derriere all day. The dream dies here.

Instead, thanks to the suggestion of a friend, here is what you get: bits and pieces of the lists of books that I am continuously compiling. About two years ago, I took a piece of loose-leaf paper and wrote out a list of books to read. Being fond of lists, I also wrote out a list of things I wanted to accomplish that summer. But the list of books to read is what concerns us here. I had grown tired of that oh-so-familiar library experience: I head to the library to check out a book to read, only to arrive and realize that I can't remember a single one of the hundreds of books that people had suggested to me. Ergo, list.

This one wasn't the first of its kind. I made my high school English teacher draw up a similar list of classic literary works for me to read, and I read most of them. But this list went above and beyond the previous lists, because I continued to use it, up until a couple of days ago, when I transferred it into a lined notebook. The loose leaf paper was getting rather ragged.

Without further ado (despite strong urges to make this whole passage as long-winded as possible just for the hell of it), I will now reproduce here two of the three lists that the brand-new notebook contains: a list of the books recommended to me (which, of course, I may or may not read), a list of books that will eventually end up in my library because they are splendid, and a list of books that I will buy for academic purposes. The third list probably won't interest you in the least, so you'll have to hunt me down and ask me if you really want to find out more about it. Also, due to sheer laziness and lack of interest on my part, I will not be telling you about the final piece of this spectacular new notebook: brief, cryptic book reports on the stuff I have already read. That's just bookkeeping so I don't unknowingly read the same thing twice. It was rather irritating to read The Voyage Out, by Virginia Woolf, for a second time, especially as it was only moderately good and not spectacular, as I had hoped. But enough. The lists!

Books for my Future Library
  1. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
  2. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
  3. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
  4. The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry
  5. The complete works of Jane Austen, who somehow managed to become a literary great
  6. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
  7. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
  8. The works of the Tolkeinator
  9. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
  10. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  11. The Beak of the Finch
  12. Catcher in the Rye
  13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
  14. Invisible Man, Ellison
  15. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
  16. The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
  17. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  18. Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett
  19. Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett
  20. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn
  21. The Selfish Gene, Stephen J. Gould
  22. The Art of Happiness, Andrew C. Cutler, and H.H. The Dalai Lama

My List of Books to Read, in no particular order or degree of availability
  1. The Moral Animal, Wright
  2. Levine
  3. Rethinking Innateness
  4. Fodor and His Critics
  5. Animal Species and Evolution, Ernst Mayr
  6. The Evolution of Desire, David Buss
  7. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
  8. Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
  9. Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
  10. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
  11. More Kerouac?
  12. The Red Tent (I have some misgivings about this item, based on the rabid response this book evokes in certain parties, but I may read it nonetheless simply so that I can have an informed opinion about it. I should note here that on the original loose-leaf list I have written, " 'I hate menstrual feminism.' -Annie.")
  13. A Beautiful Mind (recommended by Annie)
  14. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  15. The Shell Game (rowing classic)
  16. Cosmic Dawn, Eric Chaisson
  17. The Red and the Black, Stendhal (Joseph)
  18. The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan (reviewed on NPR)
  19. Life and Death in Shanghai
  20. Riding the Iron Rooster, Paul Thoreaux (based on reading another book of his, Fresh Air Fiend
  21. Cultural Literacy, E.D. Hirsch
  22. Getting to Yes
  23. The Good Life, Peter Gomes
  24. What is Ancient Philosophy?, Hadot
  25. Breaking the Chain of Compulsive Behavior, Martha Beck
  26. Empire (recommended by Annie, who has mixed feelings about it)
  27. Evelina, Frances Burney
  28. The End of Alice, A.M. Homes (recommended by Caroline as an alternative to The Safety of Objects, which was recommended to me by some forgotten party, but which Caroline said was disturbing)
  29. The Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson (tried reading it at the beginning of a new school year, but it was too much work at the time; also contains a famous generalization by Wilson: "Invasive species pose the second greatest threat to biodiversity.")
  30. Cherokee Woman, Theda Purdue (this could be a wrong title; I have to locate a syllabus to find the correct title; if you're interested, e-mail me and I'll look it up for you and find related books, too. But I kind of doubt that you're interested.)
  31. The Lexis and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
  32. One World, Peter Singer
  33. Is Tomorrow Hitler's?, H.R. Knickerbocker
  34. A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn (I have misgivings!)
  35. The Book of Hours, Rainier Marie Rilke
  36. The Secret Life of Bees (too popular for my predilections, but what the heck because I study social insects)
  37. A book by Howard Bridges, probably called Transitions
  38. Heavenly Discourse, C.S.E. Woods (recommended by Jackie, but she also said it's impossible to get ahold of it, so you have to see her if you want to borrow her copy, and she's probably not going to loan it to you)
  39. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Susan Faludi (recommended by Annie, I believe)
  40. Popper, on the philosophy of science (recommended by Kirk)
  41. Hempel, who writes stuff based on Wittgenstein (also recommended by Kirk)
  42. The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan
  43. Brick Lane, Monica Ali (recommended by Annie)
  44. The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abrams (recommended by my dad)
  45. A Walk in the Woods, Bryson (recommended by Uncle Frank)
  46. Barrel Fever, David Sedaris, along with his other stuff (recommended by Uncle Frank et al.)
  47. The Adolescent, which also goes by the names An Accidental Family and A Raw Youth, a somewhat rare Dostoevsky work (recommended by Joseph, who also recommends pondering the titles as you read the book, once you find it)
  48. Savage Love, Dan Savage himself (recommended by Sonja)
  49. Stiff (recommended by Rosemary for those who have a strong stomach)
  50. My Family Album, a coffee table book by a primate photographer (recommended by Sonja)
  51. Life is a Miracle, Wendell Berry (recommended by my dad)

As Johnny Moses says, "And that is all..."